Comments on: Marx, God and Faith in the Marketshttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/
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By: epchttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/comment-page-1/#comment-356539
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:16:11 +0000http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/#comment-356539Economic systems are no more sacred than is goverrnment, and government is restriction — repressive: and is evil. The “governing” principal is that morality, that sense inside our breastbone which tells us “Wrong!”, is merely the cum of what works over the long haul. It doesn’t come down to us from a Bible, or Koran, etc. It needs no acceptable economic system to be acknowledged as the prevailing rule of conduct. It’s what works. Flout it to your eventual catastrophy.

Yes, communism was a useful foil to challenge the excesses of self-appointed capitalists. But in our hearts (and theirs) we knew it was Wrong!. So is unrestained capitalism. Better is what’s best for all in the long run.

We are now in the Greater Depression, created not by economic system but by government. It is apparently too un-PC to point out that the legislation requiring banks to pass red lines and mortgage property for persons obviously never able to pay was the origin of toxic assets and therefore bank failures. Now we live in a landscape of vacant houses and refugee families, unemployed and unable to redeem themselves. That is morally wrong; whatever economic system, however ineffectual government, it is an ethical imperative that we correct this. Executive order of moratorium on foreclosures…open rent-free occupancy to bereft occupants…write down of bad assets by the banks which bought them. If those banks fail, let them. That’s free enterprise: capitalism at work. Who needs them? We’re subsidizing them to return to profit and they refuse to perform their function: lending. Let them survive on the streets amidst the people they have impoverished. Or become Communists within the government.

]]>By: Abby Tucson, AZhttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/comment-page-1/#comment-356527
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:04:02 +0000http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/#comment-356527It is important when discussing the USSR to remember the revolution. Social democrats, Mencheviks, were defeated by communists, Bolsheviks. Communists reject the democratic process, reducing their system to nothing more than a monopoly of power in socialist cloth while seizing private property and pretending to manage it for the masses. Communism is a failed idea, much as monopolistic capitalism is a failed idea. Only democracy can thwart the ultimate goal of both of these losers.

Without the USSR to worry about, the banks turned on one another. Wasn’t the arguement for allowing finance to engage in this reckless behavior one of global competition? CDSs can only be bought from Americans and sold in American exchanges. Nice work, Wall Street. Who needs the neutron bomb?

]]>By: wdefhttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/comment-page-1/#comment-355991
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:33:45 +0000http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/#comment-355991In a sense the good Bishop is right, in the sense that having the Soviet economic system as a competitor, it forced the capitalist countries to reign in robber baron economics and provide better economic opportunities. Things like the GI bill, education grants and loans, subsidizing farmers, subsidizing roads and transportation, the 8 hour day, the right to collective bargaining, the Marshall plan that brilliantly helped rebuild Europe, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, workplace safety rules, all can be traced back to the rise of the USSR as a threat/competitor to the capitalist countries (and before some bozo goes off and accuses me of saying how great the USSR was, it wasn’t, it simply was seen as a competitor and threat to the west). It isn’t coincidental that the rise of such things happened after the USSR was founded, and especially the GI bill and support for higher education came out of the rivalry with the USSR during the cold war. It also saw the creation of safeguards to stop abuses, strong regulatory rules and the like, to help check the power of corporations.

I also will add that in the global chess match before the end of the USSR, there was little room for ‘globalization’ as we have seen it, too much friction with the soviet block et al for that to work…..which has obviously led to the bloated salaries of high end executives and the declining proportion of sales and such that go to ordinary workers.

And note that with the end of the USSR, suddenly we see the rise of robber baron capitalism once again, we see the neo cons with their ‘government is evil’ dogma, the idea that ‘totally free markets’ work best, and what we have reaped is the evil side of that. Thanks to generous government policies, for example, executives and well off investors enjoyed huge cuts in capital gains taxes, not to mention tax policy that allowed corporations to deduct grants of stock as bonus without having to account for it as a liability, and looked what happened. CEO pay is now easily 400 times the average worker in the US, and much of this compensation is in stock grants that mature early (within a year), so those running the company have every reason to boost the stock price quickly so they can make a mint..which means, for example, laying off workers in industrialized countries, and moving it to slave wage level work in Asia and elsewhere, to increase their profitability, or doing accounting tricks and other shenanigans to boost the stock price, or sacrifice the long term for the short term, and voila, instant greed.

The USSR, as bad as it was, provided an ideological hedge against this, it was always there, telling people thatg the capitalist system was exploitive, the workers had nothing, and the only way we could counter that was by giving workers a decent wage (and it wasn’t done out of the goodness of their heart; farm subsidies and the rest were to try and appease people, the Great Depression showed how bad it could get, and showed in things like the violent reaction of farmers, the followers of things like Communism or fascists like Huey long, that if we didn’t do something, we could have a revolt).

Today we don’t have that ‘enemy’, so capitalism, which more and more is global, has decided they have nothing to fear, and the politicians they own sure as hell aren’t going to stop them. Unfortunately, despite what idiots like Antonin Scalia said, Corporations are not human, they aren’t people, and they sure as hell have no concept of morality.

]]>By: MJAhttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/comment-page-1/#comment-355977
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:31:57 +0000http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/#comment-355977The only Marx worth quoting is Groucho and he was certainly thinking of these elitist, soulless and clueless bankers when he postulated that he would never join a club that would have him as a member.
]]>By: J. Pérezhttp://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/comment-page-1/#comment-355937
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:55:23 +0000http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/marx-god-and-faith-in-the-markets/#comment-355937Poor Karl ! If that is what he hears in Hell. Please notice I am not Prudhom.
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